Monthly Archives: October 2012

Well after months of hard work and goal setting I have achieved two goals.

Starting size was 18-20 clothes or xxl//xl New Zealand sizing.

My main goal when I started this journey was to get into size 14 jeans and size 16 top well I have achieved this. I feel great that I have put all this effort in and have achieved. Was just the other day I could really feel like I had lost a lot because I was being smart and dancing in the car to embarrass my preteen daughter and realised I could move so freely and wondered how on earth I managed to do that when I was larger. So now I am at this size I have decided that I need to reassess where I am at and where to next.

My Size 14 trousers and 16 top

My other goal was to fit into these clothes black trousers and white shirt.

My first aim was to get them up, then next was to do them up, that was my biggest thing for these trousers and to not have the gap in the front of the shirt.

Now I have achieved this I can see where my next goal is.

My next goal is to get rid of the muffin top from my trousers. Each month I will take a photo and post it.

If you set your mind and set realistic goals breaking a main goal into small achievable goals you have a greater chance of succeeding.

Like this:

I start this post with my thoughts to all the people who have been affected in America. Such a devastating time to millions of people and hope your all able to recover quickly.

This is what we are having this week as you can see we enjoy a variety I often eat veges and I will add veges like carrot to mince meals, Food can be so much fun. Finding a recipe and seeing how you can make it that bit healthier, or to just finding ways of adding more vegetables. Just remember we eat to live not live to eat, have fun get the family involved in cooking make it a real social occasion. Your body is having a party every time you eat, so why shouldn’t you..

I will give you links to websites for recipes or even write-up a recipe from my trusty recipe book,

I won’t be telling you nutritional information, and this is why, some people are just looking for inspiration, some people want to look at calories, fat, protein, some people just want to jazz their meals up with a bit of spice.

I am not a nutritionist, but what I am is a mother, that is on a mission to find recipes that makes eating a way of life that is fun for us but also that is good for the body.

I usually have one soup a week this is a good way to get vegetables into us. This is minestrone, vegetable any kind, there are thousands out there, this week I am having onion soup. I always make a big pot of soup and I am able to freeze and then I have soup ready to have. Also check out recipes that you can buy and make more of and freeze and in portions that you can pull out like a ready meal, or partial ready meal.

Also if you are going to have salad try to make it fresh, I brought some deli salad from a supermarket, which is ok if you are in a hurry but fresh is best.

Hopefully you have had a good summer vege garden or you are just starting your summer one depending on where you are. Make the most of it.

I have recently started adding food pictures of different meals and the website, what I have decided to do is to put our weekly evening meal plan up on here. My daughter and I sit down once a week and make a plan for evening meals so this makes shopping so much easier, and with portion control we are able to see exactly what we need. Now everybody is different on the way they do their groceries and buying of food. For us it is planned and lists.

I will continue to put up worthy meals that I feel that tastes good that are easy to do, and are well just worth you all giving it a go.

I hope to inspire you to try something new, to think outside the square, and to really enjoy your meals.

Over the years I have partaken in writing food journals, whether it was cause I was in a paid diet or I was just watching what I was eating.

Depending on what journal I was doing dependent on what I wrote some just asked for food others asked for calories, protein, and other nutritional information, and some even asked me to count how many glasses of water I drank a day.

Now I like a list for grocery shopping, list for kids to get stuff down around the house they have a purpose, what is the purpose of writing down the food, to me that was like writing down food to make me feel guilty in all the areas I went wrong, it was always the negatives I was looking at, I was also really bad at writing down my foods, I would do really well for a few days then have a blow out and think oh well I will start again tomorrow and not write them down. Oh how wrong was I in not writing it down. I was never giving me a true representation of what I was truly doing, and I still didn’t understand the whole why am I doing this.

Well if you have been reading my blog you will know that I have been, I finally found a system that works for me,

this is one area of concern, I have been doing food diaries because everyone kept telling me I had to and here use this or go here and get this one. But I had to find something that was true to whom I am. So I have taken bits and pieces and made my own, I do urge you if you if it doesn’t feel right find a system that is going to work for you we are all different and we all have our own ways of doing things.

So I have found a system that works for me and I am not writing water in talk about how to get obsessed with something you don’t need to as a lot of your fluid in take comes from food. I know the food I eat and I know the water I drink I am also in tuned with my body so water does not need to be recorded.

So I have been doing this journal after I wrote just the foods down and I could see that fat is a big issue for me but also that I was not getting enough calories. So this new journal that I have put together is for me to make sure that I have enough calories in my diet and the right amount of fat.

So this is my awakening about food journals. This is the bit that I just did not get.

I eat x amount of food which has X amount of fat.. this is in my ratio so great.

I then eat another x amount of food and I get X amount of fat.. this X amount of food technically I should not have eaten.. I am eating to live not living to eat. So this food has taken me well over my fat and I do the old oh well life happens move on start fresh the next day. But instead I decided to write all that I ate down. I have done it for the last four days. Now I can see why this is what I can see now that I could not see before.

It is written down it is in front of your eyes it is real. You have just informed yourself that you have just eaten x amount of calories. I then write next to it stating why, for me it has been stress on different occasions. It was like a light bulb going of. I was not proud that I ate that amount of food but I was proud that I wrote it all down and I could see, this was the missing link, this is giving me the true account of my eating habits, this is going to show me my weak points in my life, how to I am going to achieve my healthy size I want to be in my new healthy lifestyle.

Whom would have thought that writing down every single thing could make such a difference all these years I failed because I didn’t write ever single morsel that I ate.

Now I look back and think to myself how could I not see that. How could I not understand that seeing a true account of your eating habits is actually really productive in your weight loss. It is not just about writing your food and your calories like all journals tell you to do but also your mood what happened to make you eat that piece of cake or that chocolate, crepes all 8 of them with butter and golden syrup. Seeing it written down why you did it, can make a huge different in how you see things. If you ate fancy desert or cake cause you went to a wedding or a party, then you write it down, if you got depressed over something write it down. Write all of it down.

Then you can see what things trigger you to eat, and this is going to give you the power to move forward.

I can see now the days that I have blown out but I can also see why. This for me has being so empowering in the fact that I now have control of my food. It is up to me to watch for triggers and learn from them not to hide them by not writing them down like it never happened that is not a true account of what has happened.

So please if you are sitting here reading this and you think “oh dear I didn’t write that food down” go and do it right now you will feel so much better for it..

This is how I do my journal.. using excel sheet I have put in product calories carbs protein and fat, I printed off a sheet from nowloss.com I laminated this as I am not one to keep lots of bits of paper but have tried websites before, So doing this suits my personality well. I put my daily food in, I sit down with my daughter and we put together a meal that will suit us for the week and I take this and add things that I need to suit my 6 meals a day. I use the spread sheet to write down food that I use this is my dictionary I love excel and works great for me. I use a white board marker to fill in my laminated sheet for the day sometimes will be preplanned other days I wing it.. ( note not really best idea on winging it usually don’t do to well on these days), at the end of the day I calculate everything and I put it in the next page on Excel. I also write next to it what is gone well or why I went over my fat count.
After 7 days of doing this I will start to see where stresses are in my life and find ways to deal with them.

This has for me been the best system that takes in all my personality traits.

So please if you are sitting here reading this and you think “ops I didn’t write that food down” go and do it right now you will feel so much better for it..

If you have not started to journal your food, look at why you are not doing it yet have you done it in the past and it did not work did you like any parts of that journal. Then take that part and make your own up. But don’t fret if it doesn’t work out keep going till you find a system that works for you. Also think about what you are trying to record is it why you binge it.. or you are eating too much fat or just to keep what calories you have eaten, what ever your reason been make it about that specific item. Bye working on one thing at a time your are more likely to succeed, I am working on calories, fat ratio, how can I get enough calories in my diet without all the fat intake.

please comment on if you use a journal and how it works for you or anything you would like to share about journals

Not sure how to write this but will do my best. For a long time I struggle with depression it started off with post natal and then just steam rolled into just plain old depression. I thought I could battle it myself which I have done really well the exercise is a great for making my endorphins swim through my body and making me happy.

When I first embarked on this journey of self discovery, of who I am and where I am wanting to head, one can never foresee the future, one can set goals and aim to sort their frame of mind out.

I have read stories of people leaving their pasts behind, or people who have woken up one morning to realise they have pushed everyone away in sorting themselves out. Well I was at the gym before and I was seeing a group of girls there having a lovely time having a great laugh and realised my god I have not done that in such a long time just to have a good laugh with some friends.

My life since I split with my ex about 5 years ago as been depression, partying, night clubbing, my children, then it became, Autism, I am a mum of an Autistic boy and that has led my life in a way that I thought it never would. You close one door for me that was clubbing etc and I found the Autism door, you get a child with special needs in your house and you don’t realise how much of an impact it puts on a family unit, you can see it I have seen it for years and thought I understood, But really I had no clue what they would truly be going through. Even now I still don’t know what others go through as I have a great boy and is improving slowly. You could almost say that he started us on this healthy eating, he has such a limited diet as he wont eat certain stuff and he is allergic to other stuff, so makes it hard, but I started to read labels, that is when of course as you do start to meet other families and parents and it was another mother of a children with various needs introduced me to Richard my PT.

I also don’t really know how to do the friendship thing it is hard when I don’t understand the rules of that, so that makes it hard to have friends in the first instance. I have always been a loner and during my growing up it was hard to have friends I just followed like a sheep, but I am older now and I can see what having friends can be like. I feel like I am looking in from the outside as always. I always used to think how cool it would be to have lots of friends when in reality all you need is one good one..

Well back to where I was heading, I have worked through a lot of stuff over the last few years, I have come far but as I am sitting here about to do my second to last assignment for my Intro to management course.

I am left wondering how do people become a better person and still have friends, good friends, a friend that they can call when the chips are down, or to hang out with when their kids are at their dads,

My life has had big changes in it i become that gym freak that I vowed I never would,

So here I sit with my new life my new body, fitter and healthier, money almost under control, happy kids.

But friendless I have acquaintances and they all on Face book, but I don’t actually have people to hang out with as in a friendly let’s go for coffee kinda way etc. I then wonder what is a friend has the word friend changed from what I grew up thinking a friend is. Is having people you have never meet but you short moments through status’s on the likes of Facebook and why is it so much easier to chat through there than to actually have to deal with people in real life. Oh the questions that surround the whole friendships thing is horrendous.

How could I not see this happening, I do know I was so wrapped up in me and my kids making sure they were fine and I was being sorted, and I do know it was easier to have people away from me whilst I did it.

I am a much stronger person now for it I am more confident, knowledgeable and wiser and I know what I want but I am still friendly I still want to have a laugh just like the girls in the gym.

Kinda makes me feel sad that I have come out the other side (even though I am still doing) with no actual friends.

Please remember this is my story this is my thoughts if you are on a self discovery journey yours will be different to mine, everybody is different, putting plans into place to that there is time for you and your friends is really important, to remind them that they are still needed in your life.

Like this:

Once I used to measure all the time, just like the scales but not as bad.. more weekly than every day. I have not measured myself for at least a couple of months. I woke up the other morning and noticed that I had lost weight around my neck. Others have probably noticed it cause as we all know we are the last to notice changes to our body. I wanted to know what my measurements were but not in a way that I used. Before it was weight then feel horrible cause my body was not moving, or it had moved but was never happy with the measurements. I can see that I have lost weight I know the tape measure is going to say that I have. So it was more putting a number to what I have already lost opposed to finding out what I have lost. So changing the measuring around so to speak.

but I also knew that I would be, because I can see what I have lost so there was never going to be any disappointment. I will measure myself again when I can see that I have lost enough to warrant being measured.

So to measure yourself after you can see that you have lost weight and putting a number to what you can see you have lost is a different way of seeing your changes.

Now some are wondering why measure at all if we know we have lost. I have been pondering that also what is it going to achieve. Well we are human and we like numbers when it comes to losing weight and getting healthy. So putting a number to your visible shrinking body will fill that hole for a number and but will decrease your disappointment.

Try it wait to see a loss on your body and then measure it what have you got to lose.

Well sort of, Tonight I did a new recipe, new style that I am used to, usually steak eggs chips onions mushroom, but not tonight.

Tonight I found the most easiest of recipes. How something so yummy could be so simple. So fresh lettuce and herbs from the garden also good to get some food from the garden.

Ok so if you been following me I usually don’t always have all the ingredients or I add something or leave something out. Well nothing is changed, my lime tree has no fruit so I used lemon I didn’t put crushed red pepper in, and I added yellow capsicum (bell pepper), and no cucumber as I didn’t have much. and I sliced up normal tomatoes as I didn’t have cherry tomatoes.

I have found using the peeler to get thin strips of carrot, nice a quick and easy to do.

Meatballs was our meal tonight, now usually it would be meatballs and spaghetti with a mound of cheese on top, tonight I made home-made pasta sauce the meatballs came from the organic butcher, I also added carrots cauliflower and silver beat/Swiss chard to the mixture. Nice way to get more vegetables into you. Take the old and make it more healthier is the way to go.

I would usually make my own whole meal pasta but tonight it was plain packet spaghetti.

Well I have been sitting here looking at websites about different foods, and I kept seeing TOP 10 HEALTHY FOODS.

Please remember this is my opinion and if unsure please do your own research on food before adding or taking away, I am not a health profession I am here to show you what is out there to try and improve the food you eat.

OK so I typed in top 10 healthy foods and you get so many top 10 healthy foods,

So here is my list of WEBSITES they are not in any specific order, I do not endorse any company this is solely to show you the top different 10’s some are the same some have different things, but I hope after looking at a few you get the idea and you may find items you want to try. Even if you find one new thing to try than this post has been worth it.

Well there are all types of humus and it is up to you how you go about using this delectable substance.

I have always stared clear of hummus, I have tried it a few times but not really my thing, and we all have preferences. Also because I was seeing it as an unhealthy option in my weird and wonderful mind. All I could see it was an oily dip.

Well times have changed since my last try of hummus I have become more aware of health benefits of different food, my tastes have changed and I also now look into food to see what it can do for me.

I was at Richards (PT) the other day and he had made cruskits http://www.arnotts.co.nz/our-products/products/cruskits.aspxand link shows what cruskits are. Richard stated he makes his own hummus without oil, well for starters I thought great, he let me try some and I loved it. He told me how he makes his. I went and got the ingredients but have been busy on a two-day course so I have been putting Tahini on cruskits instead. I finally got around to making this hummus it is not the same as Richards but still tastes great. Even though I out in same ingredients.

I had gotten rid of butter off of my toast and sandwiches I am not really one for spreads like jam etc. But this hummus is great.

I just had a Cruskit with humus, boiled egg, ham, it was very yummy, I got inspired to share about humus with you all.

When I make my humus I do not put oil in, as I get enough good fats from using LSA, Linseed, sunflower seeds and Almonds and many other ways in my diet I don’t need to be putting more good fats in. Here are some websites to teach you more about humus.